Tuesday's Ask the Experts: Extremely low bid

September 22, 2009

Tuesday''s Ask the Experts question from a cleaning professional on theInternational Custodial Advisors Network(ICAN)"Ask the Experts"page:We have a new out-of-state janitorial company that has come into the Jackson, MS, area and is bidding Class A office space at $0.055 per square foot.

This includes carpet cleaning, hard floor stripping and finishing, and 5 day-a-week cleaning. How is he doing it for this price?

The answer:

That seems to be a low price, especially when project work such as carpet cleaning is included. Only time will tell if it is too low to actually perform a quality job. Watch the project and see how the cleaning looks six months from now.

There are economies of scale. A truly large company may be buying equipment and supplies in large quantities and saving money in that area.

A large company can make a smaller profit on each of its many accounts and still run in the black. And labor costs can be reduced by paying... — Lynn E. Krafft, ICAN/ATEX editor, lekrafft@juno.com